Philadelphia Small Business Owner on Obama, the Payroll Tax (and Bill Conlin)

Dec 21, 2011

RUSH: We start in Philadelphia. Bill, great to have you here. Bill, I have to ask you a question.

CALLER: Shoot.

RUSH: Did you have trouble getting out of bed today when you learned that Bill Conlin, the ancient Jurassic Park sportswriter, has been accused of fondling young kids back in the seventies?

CALLER: Well, you know, I heard that last night, and I was really disappointed, and I was kind of shocked, because he’s been a staple here for years and years —

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: — and everybody respects him and —

RUSH: I was shocked, too. Who would have ever believed a sportswriter could be accused of such thing. Normally, it’s sportswriters who accuse people of doing that. But now a sportswriter has been accused.

CALLER: It was with his family, I mean that’s the shocking part.

RUSH: Yeah. Yeah. One of his family members pretty much admitted it.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: He used to work for ESPN. He was one of the sports reporters, like 300 different times he used to work at ESPN. I was stunned that a sports reporter could engage in this kind of depravity because I thought sports reporters were the essence of propriety, clean and pure as the wind-driven snow. They sit in judgment on everyone else. I was shocked. I must tell you, I was shocked.

CALLER: Rush, when this Social Security, what they’re fighting about now is just so ridiculous, it’s not gonna create one stupid job anywhere. It’s not gonna do anything for the economy. You know, I’m a small business guy, I’m a subcontractor. I look out for my business. I look to Wall Street, I look to Fortune 500 companies and they got their boot on the necks of these people, and they’re not unleashing ’em. I had a guy tell me yesterday, I was sitting in his office, he said, “Bill, we’re war horses. We’re at the gate at a race track, and they won’t release the gate.” Since he became president I lost 20 employees. I had to lay 20 people off. And every day is a struggle. I get up at six in the morning, I’m home at nine o’clock at night trying to keep the business going, trying to get my people back to work —

RUSH: Yeah, I know.

CALLER: — and all I hear is them fighting over this stupid two-month extension which means nothing.

RUSH: Right. And here you are, a business owner making it clear this is not gonna matter to you whatsoever. It won’t matter. Let me ask you, Bill, before you go, will your accountant or whoever handles your business’s finances be able to figure out how to do all of this, the deductions and make it legal, be in compliance for two months?

CALLER: You know what, you don’t even worry about it, because it doesn’t matter. You worry about it at the end, you do what you gotta do. But it’s not the point. We need to get business back going. You know, small subcontractors like me are doing business, we’re buying things, we’re buying cars, we’re upgrading all our equipment.

RUSH: I have to tell you —

CALLER: Right now all we’re doing is repairing our cars.

RUSH: Let me tell you something. This guy, folks, listen to him. He runs a business. He’s had to lay off 20 people. He’s telling you this is inconsequential. And it is because it’s not a tax cut. It’s inconsequential money. It is not cutting a marginal income tax rate. There’s no incentive here. There’s no permanence to it. Two months. All it is is an optic. It’s an effort to make Obama look like he’s cutting taxes in an election year. He’s doing the exact opposite of who he really is, and we’re being told today by the powers that be in our party, let him do it, otherwise, oh, it’s gonna be a disaster. Two months. Now we’ve got — if all these reporters have got it right on Newt, who’s maybe not run a business himself, he’s running around saying we can’t beat the president. Does anybody on our side know what really is happening with this?

Does anybody understand that this is nothing more than a depletion of the Social Security funding mechanism? A program they’ve told us for 75 years is an insurance program, you deduct from your earnings, it’s put into a trust fund and it comes back to you when you retire. It’s never been a tax; it’s never been an entitlement; it’s never been welfare; it’s always been an insurance program, now all of a sudden it’s — this is what I mean when I say we just continue to let these people establish the premise of everything. It’s another illustration of we get up, we mind our own business, we’re going about our lives, all of a sudden we gotta defend it, gotta defend what we believe in, defend what we stand for, defend this, and we’re never advancing it.